Seen

“Everyone wants to be loved, yet no one’s ready to love.”

For two people to connect meaningfully during the long night journey, can they summon the energy to communicate, while still groggy with disappointment and a certain sense of despair? What exactly do we express to each other in these moments? The stories which we tell are sometimes thin and remote, with moody imagery and laconic dialogue, yet it seems some larger metaphor is being implied. We strive to come more alive, leaving behind the claustrophobic limitations of space, time and character for the sensuality and danger that can create a new poetic language.

Seen, a project created by Alyona Movko Mägi and Madara Gruntmane with a social-poetic content draws attention, according to the artists “to a part of society that is often called marginal – people who are outside the boundaries of social norms, are ignored, deliberately not seen or heard.” In their multi-screen installation the artists merge digital, reality and dream realms using filmed material and virtual avatars based on the central heroes.

Ideas of the context live around us in everyday life. A poem read by any of society members creates its own shade or colour, intonation, speed of reading or experiences of the words we read. The written text is changed under our interpretation and so, through the listener and not through the reader, the written words transform their shape and performativity, changing their significance.